My draft of the message for Sunday.

Palm Sunday: Passionate Joy Luke 19:28-40 2013 03 24

A cartoon in the Observer a few years ago showed Jesus riding a colt and a donkey, and muttering.  "The things I do to fulfill prophecy."

An important part of Christianity is embracing absurdity -- ours is not a religion for logical people. All the stories of Holy Week have a touch of the absurd in them.  The disciples and other followers of Jesus have spent months wandering around following him, listening, watching, questioning. He said he would die in Jerusalem due to the animosity of the religious and political leaders. And so they throw a parade for him, shouting praises to him, sure to get the attention of the authorities, and they did.

Jesus goes into the temple, throws out the money changers and sellers of animals for sacrifice, and gets to go back to his friends' place without being arrested.

At the Passover supper, he washes his disciples' feet, describes the first cup as being his blood and the bread as being his body.  More absurdity.

On Friday he was condemned by a Roman ruler who really did not care that much if he lived or died  And then he is given a rich man's burial instead of having his body dumped in the garbage dump outside the walls like most criminals.

In the midst of this strange, absurd, story, God lurkd, and an invitation was offered to those who would rather be in a right relationship with God than in a relationship with society and its rulers that is comfortable and logical.

As was emphasized by Rev Dawson at presbytery last week, we need, first of all, to keep our eyes on Jesus.  Then we too need to join the parade.

What does it mean to see and watch Jesus?  We first set aside all of our acquired pictures of him.  He was a dark-skinned Semite like most of the Palestinians and Jews who have always lived in the Middle East.  While he said to let the children come to him, what he said was challenging and upsetting to most of his listeners.  He was one of many preachers and healers wandering around Galilee, Judea and other Middle East provinces of the Roman Empire.   Through him, people had a profound experience of God.  He challenged the religious establishment of his time as a Jew deeply committed to his faith.  We know of him as someone with whom his followers had a profound resurrection experience.  To me we must remember what the gospels recorded him as saying and doing, even though there is intense debate about what he actually said and did.

Now, who was in the small crowd around him in that procession? Most of his followers were marginalized people, young men and women, most of them under the age of 20, with occupations near the bottom rungs of society. The crowd included his enemies, people curious about him, and rubber-neckers.

If we were to have a parade for him today, whom would we want to include in that parade?  Among the marginalized we need to include First Nations , Metis, and Inuit people.  Before our ancestors came to North America, the aboriginal people were strong, healthy peoples, self-reliant, technologically advanced, with a strong spirituality, and socially far more progressive than our ancestors.  Their socially advanced culture made it necessary for them to be kind hosts to our ancestors, and they saved many of our ancestors from deaths due to hunger and disease. 

Unfortunately, our ancestors came with an imperialist mindset, and their exploitation of the generosity of the people who were here included many actions that shame me as a follower of Jesus.  I believe that Idle No More events today are a faithful companion activity to Palm Sunday parades. We also need to include people with mental illnesses, people who grew up in socially barren homes, some of the elderly, and many of young people who have been neglected by our society.  We also need to include those who look like enemies so they may have an experience of Jesus, or of loving communities grounded on relationship with him.  They need the opportunity to learn that Jesus did not hate the establishment of his time, or of our time, but he felt deeply saddened by their failures to lead in ways that honoured God and cared about people.  And we need to include the curious and the rubber-neckers for the experience may open doors to God for them.

What kind of parade should we have?  It needs to be joy-filled, bold, and inviting.  Good Friday was a devastating day for the followers of Jesus, but it provided a way for God to show the world that death is not the end.  We need to be bold in declaring that, no matter what harm or evil may come our way, the way set by Jesus leads to real life, rewarding and fulfilling life.  Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Easter Sunday and Pentecost are metaphorical events:  they do not show us the empire of God that was intended for this world, but they point us toward that empire.  We are being prodded, pulled and enticed towards a world in which everyone has a place of value, where none need to go hungry or homeless or alone.  Our parade needs to reveal great optimism, joy and love.

Where does our parade need to go? That first parade was on a main entrance to Jerusalem at a busy time.  Our parade needs to go where people are, and we need to be prepared to compete for attention with other parades: sports and entertainment parades that distract people from the reality of life, shopping and the other parades of self-indulgence that entice people to put themselves at the centre  of their existence, and the hate and fear parades that coerce people into hating and fearing others.

That ragtag group of followers eventually conquered the Roman Empire.  When God is with us, anything is possible  So, be absurdly bold in joyfully declaring that we follow Jesus, and we are ready to work for a world that is new, faithful when we hear Christ's call  As a warm-up let us join in singing Hymn 424  May the God of Hope Go With Us.